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  <div class="section" id="s-writing-your-first-django-app-part-3">
<span id="writing-your-first-django-app-part-3"></span><h1>Writing your first Django app, part 3<a class="headerlink" href="#writing-your-first-django-app-part-3" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>This tutorial begins where <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial02.html"><em>Tutorial 2</em></a> left off. We&#8217;re
continuing the Web-poll application and will focus on creating the public
interface &#8211; &#8220;views.&#8221;</p>
<div class="section" id="s-philosophy">
<span id="philosophy"></span><h2>Philosophy<a class="headerlink" href="#philosophy" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>A view is a &#8220;type&#8221; of Web page in your Django application that generally serves
a specific function and has a specific template. For example, in a blog
application, you might have the following views:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Blog homepage &#8211; displays the latest few entries.</li>
<li>Entry &#8220;detail&#8221; page &#8211; permalink page for a single entry.</li>
<li>Year-based archive page &#8211; displays all months with entries in the
given year.</li>
<li>Month-based archive page &#8211; displays all days with entries in the
given month.</li>
<li>Day-based archive page &#8211; displays all entries in the given day.</li>
<li>Comment action &#8211; handles posting comments to a given entry.</li>
</ul>
<p>In our poll application, we&#8217;ll have the following four views:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Question &#8220;index&#8221; page &#8211; displays the latest few questions.</li>
<li>Question &#8220;detail&#8221; page &#8211; displays a question text, with no results but
with a form to vote.</li>
<li>Question &#8220;results&#8221; page &#8211; displays results for a particular question.</li>
<li>Vote action &#8211; handles voting for a particular choice in a particular
question.</li>
</ul>
<p>In Django, web pages and other content are delivered by views. Each view is
represented by a simple Python function (or method, in the case of class-based
views). Django will choose a view by examining the URL that&#8217;s requested (to be
precise, the part of the URL after the domain name).</p>
<p>Now in your time on the web you may have come across such beauties as
&#8220;ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&amp;type=gen&amp;mod=Core+Pages&amp;gid=A6CD4967199A42D9B65B1B&#8221;.
You will be pleased to know that Django allows us much more elegant
<em>URL patterns</em> than that.</p>
<p>A URL pattern is simply the general form of a URL - for example:
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">/newsarchive/&lt;year&gt;/&lt;month&gt;/</span></tt>.</p>
<p>To get from a URL to a view, Django uses what are known as &#8216;URLconfs&#8217;. A
URLconf maps URL patterns (described as regular expressions) to views.</p>
<p>This tutorial provides basic instruction in the use of URLconfs, and you can
refer to <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urlresolvers.html#module-django.core.urlresolvers" title="django.core.urlresolvers"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.core.urlresolvers</span></tt></a> for more information.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-write-your-first-view">
<span id="write-your-first-view"></span><h2>Write your first view<a class="headerlink" href="#write-your-first-view" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s write the first view. Open the file <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/views.py</span></tt>
and put the following Python code in it:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.http</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span>


<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">index</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;Hello, world. You&#39;re at the polls index.&quot;</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>This is the simplest view possible in Django. To call the view, we need to map
it to a URL - and for this we need a URLconf.</p>
<p>To create a URLconf in the polls directory, create a file called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">urls.py</span></tt>.
Your app directory should now look like:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre>polls/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    models.py
    tests.py
    urls.py
    views.py
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>In the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/urls.py</span></tt> file include the following code:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/urls.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.conf.urls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">url</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">views</span>

<span class="n">urlpatterns</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">index</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;index&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The next step is to point the root URLconf at the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls.urls</span></tt> module. In
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite/urls.py</span></tt> insert an <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.include" title="django.conf.urls.include"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">include()</span></tt></a>, leaving you
with:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">mysite/urls.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.conf.urls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">url</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>

<span class="n">urlpatterns</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^polls/&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;polls.urls&#39;</span><span class="p">)),</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^admin/&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">urls</span><span class="p">)),</span>
<span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<div class="admonition-doesn-t-match-what-you-see admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Doesn&#8217;t match what you see?</p>
<p class="last">If you&#8217;re seeing <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">admin.autodiscover()</span></tt> before the definition of
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">urlpatterns</span></tt>, you&#8217;re probably using a version of Django that doesn&#8217;t
match this tutorial version.  You&#8217;ll want to either switch to the older
tutorial or the newer Django version.</p>
</div>
<p>You have now wired an <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index</span></tt> view into the URLconf. Go to
<a class="reference external" href="http://localhost:8000/polls/">http://localhost:8000/polls/</a> in your browser, and you should see the text
&#8220;<em>Hello, world. You&#8217;re at the polls index.</em>&#8221;, which you defined in the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index</span></tt> view.</p>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> function is passed four arguments, two
required: <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">regex</span></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">view</span></tt>, and two optional: <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">kwargs</span></tt>, and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">name</span></tt>.
At this point, it&#8217;s worth reviewing what these arguments are for.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-url-argument-regex">
<span id="url-argument-regex"></span><h3><a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> argument: regex<a class="headerlink" href="#url-argument-regex" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>The term &#8220;regex&#8221; is a commonly used short form meaning &#8220;regular expression&#8221;,
which is a syntax for matching patterns in strings, or in this case, url
patterns. Django starts at the first regular expression and makes its way down
the list,  comparing the requested URL against each regular expression until it
finds one that matches.</p>
<p>Note that these regular expressions do not search GET and POST parameters, or
the domain name. For example, in a request to
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">http://www.example.com/myapp/</span></tt>, the URLconf will look for <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">myapp/</span></tt>. In a
request to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">http://www.example.com/myapp/?page=3</span></tt>, the URLconf will also
look for <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">myapp/</span></tt>.</p>
<p>If you need help with regular expressions, see <a class="reference external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Wikipedia&#8217;s entry</a> and the
documentation of the <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#module-re" title="(in Python v3.4)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">re</span></tt></a> module. Also, the O&#8217;Reilly book &#8220;Mastering
Regular Expressions&#8221; by Jeffrey Friedl is fantastic. In practice, however,
you don&#8217;t need to be an expert on regular expressions, as you really only need
to know how to capture simple patterns. In fact, complex regexes can have poor
lookup performance, so you probably shouldn&#8217;t rely on the full power of regexes.</p>
<p>Finally, a performance note: these regular expressions are compiled the first
time the URLconf module is loaded. They&#8217;re super fast (as long as the lookups
aren&#8217;t too complex as noted above).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-url-argument-view">
<span id="url-argument-view"></span><h3><a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> argument: view<a class="headerlink" href="#url-argument-view" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>When Django finds a regular expression match, Django calls the specified view
function, with an <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpRequest" title="django.http.HttpRequest"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpRequest</span></tt></a> object as the first
argument and any “captured” values from the regular expression as other
arguments. If the regex uses simple captures, values are passed as positional
arguments; if it uses named captures, values are passed as keyword arguments.
We&#8217;ll give an example of this in a bit.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-url-argument-kwargs">
<span id="url-argument-kwargs"></span><h3><a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> argument: kwargs<a class="headerlink" href="#url-argument-kwargs" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Arbitrary keyword arguments can be passed in a dictionary to the target view. We
aren&#8217;t going to use this feature of Django in the tutorial.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-url-argument-name">
<span id="url-argument-name"></span><h3><a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> argument: name<a class="headerlink" href="#url-argument-name" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Naming your URL lets you refer to it unambiguously from elsewhere in Django
especially templates. This powerful feature allows you to make  global changes
to the url patterns of your project while only touching a single file.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-writing-more-views">
<span id="writing-more-views"></span><h2>Writing more views<a class="headerlink" href="#writing-more-views" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Now let&#8217;s add a few more views to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/views.py</span></tt>. These views are
slightly different, because they take an argument:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">detail</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;You&#39;re looking at question </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s">.&quot;</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">)</span>

<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">results</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">response</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">&quot;You&#39;re looking at the results of question </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s">.&quot;</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">response</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">)</span>

<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">vote</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;You&#39;re voting on question </span><span class="si">%s</span><span class="s">.&quot;</span> <span class="o">%</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Wire these new views into the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls.urls</span></tt> module by adding the following
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> calls:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/urls.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.conf.urls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">url</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">views</span>

<span class="n">urlpatterns</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="c"># ex: /polls/</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">index</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;index&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
    <span class="c"># ex: /polls/5/</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">detail</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;detail&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
    <span class="c"># ex: /polls/5/results/</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/results/$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">results</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;results&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
    <span class="c"># ex: /polls/5/vote/</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/vote/$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">vote</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;vote&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Take a look in your browser, at &#8220;/polls/34/&#8221;. It&#8217;ll run the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail()</span></tt>
method and display whatever ID you provide in the URL. Try
&#8220;/polls/34/results/&#8221; and &#8220;/polls/34/vote/&#8221; too &#8211; these will display the
placeholder results and voting pages.</p>
<p>When somebody requests a page from your Web site &#8211; say, &#8220;/polls/34/&#8221;, Django
will load the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite.urls</span></tt> Python module because it&#8217;s pointed to by the
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-ROOT_URLCONF"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">ROOT_URLCONF</span></tt></a> setting. It finds the variable named <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">urlpatterns</span></tt>
and traverses the regular expressions in order. The
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.include" title="django.conf.urls.include"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">include()</span></tt></a> functions we are using simply reference
other URLconfs. Note that the regular expressions for the
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.include" title="django.conf.urls.include"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">include()</span></tt></a> functions don&#8217;t have a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">$</span></tt> (end-of-string
match character) but rather a trailing slash. Whenever Django encounters
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.include" title="django.conf.urls.include"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">include()</span></tt></a>, it chops off whatever part of the URL
matched up to that point and sends the remaining string to the included
URLconf for further processing.</p>
<p>The idea behind <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.include" title="django.conf.urls.include"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">include()</span></tt></a> is to make it easy to
plug-and-play URLs. Since polls are in their own URLconf
(<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/urls.py</span></tt>), they can be placed under &#8220;/polls/&#8221;, or under
&#8220;/fun_polls/&#8221;, or under &#8220;/content/polls/&#8221;, or any other path root, and the
app will still work.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s what happens if a user goes to &#8220;/polls/34/&#8221; in this system:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">Django will find the match at <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">'^polls/'</span></tt></p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Then, Django will strip off the matching text (<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">&quot;polls/&quot;</span></tt>) and send the
remaining text &#8211; <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">&quot;34/&quot;</span></tt> &#8211; to the &#8216;polls.urls&#8217; URLconf for
further processing which matches <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">r'^(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/$'</span></tt> resulting in a
call to the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail()</span></tt> view like so:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre>detail(request=&lt;HttpRequest object&gt;, question_id=&#39;34&#39;)
</pre></div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question_id='34'</span></tt> part comes from <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)</span></tt>. Using parentheses
around a pattern &#8220;captures&#8221; the text matched by that pattern and sends it as an
argument to the view function; <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">?P&lt;question_id&gt;</span></tt> defines the name that will
be used to identify the matched pattern; and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">\d+</span></tt> is a regular expression to
match a sequence of digits (i.e., a number).</p>
<p>Because the URL patterns are regular expressions, there really is no limit on
what you can do with them. And there&#8217;s no need to add URL cruft such as
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">.html</span></tt> &#8211; unless you want to, in which case you can do something like
this:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^polls/latest\.html$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;polls.views.index&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>But, don&#8217;t do that. It&#8217;s silly.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-write-views-that-actually-do-something">
<span id="write-views-that-actually-do-something"></span><h2>Write views that actually do something<a class="headerlink" href="#write-views-that-actually-do-something" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Each view is responsible for doing one of two things: returning an
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpResponse" title="django.http.HttpResponse"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt></a> object containing the content for the
requested page, or raising an exception such as <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a>. The
rest is up to you.</p>
<p>Your view can read records from a database, or not. It can use a template
system such as Django&#8217;s &#8211; or a third-party Python template system &#8211; or not.
It can generate a PDF file, output XML, create a ZIP file on the fly, anything
you want, using whatever Python libraries you want.</p>
<p>All Django wants is that <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpResponse" title="django.http.HttpResponse"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt></a>. Or an exception.</p>
<p>Because it&#8217;s convenient, let&#8217;s use Django&#8217;s own database API, which we covered
in <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial01.html"><em>Tutorial 1</em></a>. Here&#8217;s one stab at a new <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index()</span></tt>
view, which displays the latest 5 poll questions in the system, separated by
commas, according to publication date:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.http</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">index</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">latest_question_list</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Question</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">objects</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">order_by</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;-pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">)[:</span><span class="mi">5</span><span class="p">]</span>
    <span class="n">output</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="s">&#39;, &#39;</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">join</span><span class="p">([</span><span class="n">p</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">question_text</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">p</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">latest_question_list</span><span class="p">])</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">output</span><span class="p">)</span>

<span class="c"># Leave the rest of the views (detail, results, vote) unchanged</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>There&#8217;s a problem here, though: the page&#8217;s design is hard-coded in the view. If
you want to change the way the page looks, you&#8217;ll have to edit this Python code.
So let&#8217;s use Django&#8217;s template system to separate the design from Python by
creating a template that the view can use.</p>
<p>First, create a directory called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates</span></tt> in your <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt> directory.
Django will look for templates in there.</p>
<p>Django&#8217;s <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_LOADERS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_LOADERS</span></tt></a> setting contains a list of callables that
know how to import templates from various sources. One of the defaults is
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/api.html#django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader" title="django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader</span></tt></a> which looks for a
&#8220;templates&#8221; subdirectory in each of the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-INSTALLED_APPS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">INSTALLED_APPS</span></tt></a> - this is how
Django knows to find the polls templates even though we didn&#8217;t modify
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/settings.html#std:setting-TEMPLATE_DIRS"><tt class="xref std std-setting docutils literal"><span class="pre">TEMPLATE_DIRS</span></tt></a>, as we did in <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial02.html#ref-customizing-your-projects-templates"><em>Tutorial 2</em></a>.</p>
<div class="admonition-organizing-templates admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Organizing templates</p>
<p class="last">We <em>could</em> have all our templates together, in one big templates directory,
and it would work perfectly well. However, this template belongs to the
polls application, so unlike the admin template we created in the previous
tutorial, we&#8217;ll put this one in the application&#8217;s template directory
(<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/templates</span></tt>) rather than the project&#8217;s (<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates</span></tt>). We&#8217;ll
discuss in more detail in the <a class="reference internal" href="reusable-apps.html"><em>reusable apps tutorial</em></a> <em>why</em> we do this.</p>
</div>
<p>Within the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">templates</span></tt> directory you have just created, create another
directory called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt>, and within that create a file called
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index.html</span></tt>. In other words, your template should be at
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/templates/polls/index.html</span></tt>. Because of how the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">app_directories</span></tt>
template loader works as described above, you can refer to this template within
Django simply as <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/index.html</span></tt>.</p>
<div class="admonition-template-namespacing admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Template namespacing</p>
<p class="last">Now we <em>might</em> be able to get away with putting our templates directly in
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/templates</span></tt> (rather than creating another <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt> subdirectory),
but it would actually be a bad idea. Django will choose the first template
it finds whose name matches, and if you had a template with the same name
in a <em>different</em> application, Django would be unable to distinguish between
them. We need to be able to point Django at the right one, and the easiest
way to ensure this is by <em>namespacing</em> them. That is, by putting those
templates inside <em>another</em> directory named for the application itself.</p>
</div>
<p>Put the following code in that template:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/templates/polls/index.html</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">if</span> <span class="nv">latest_question_list</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
    <span class="nt">&lt;ul&gt;</span>
    <span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="nv">question</span> <span class="k">in</span> <span class="nv">latest_question_list</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
        <span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;/polls/</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.id</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="s">/&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;</span>
    <span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">endfor</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
    <span class="nt">&lt;/ul&gt;</span>
<span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">else</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
    <span class="nt">&lt;p&gt;</span>No polls are available.<span class="nt">&lt;/p&gt;</span>
<span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">endif</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Now let&#8217;s update our <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index</span></tt> view in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/views.py</span></tt> to use the template:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.http</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.template</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">RequestContext</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">loader</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">index</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">latest_question_list</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Question</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">objects</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">order_by</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;-pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">)[:</span><span class="mi">5</span><span class="p">]</span>
    <span class="n">template</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">loader</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get_template</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;polls/index.html&#39;</span><span class="p">)</span>
    <span class="n">context</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">RequestContext</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span>
        <span class="s">&#39;latest_question_list&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">latest_question_list</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="p">})</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">HttpResponse</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">template</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">render</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">context</span><span class="p">))</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>That code loads the template called  <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/index.html</span></tt> and passes it a
context. The context is a dictionary mapping template variable names to Python
objects.</p>
<p>Load the page by pointing your browser at &#8220;/polls/&#8221;, and you should see a
bulleted-list containing the &#8220;What&#8217;s up&#8221; question from Tutorial 1. The link points
to the question&#8217;s detail page.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-a-shortcut-render">
<span id="a-shortcut-render"></span><h3>A shortcut: <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.render" title="django.shortcuts.render"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">render()</span></tt></a><a class="headerlink" href="#a-shortcut-render" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>It&#8217;s a very common idiom to load a template, fill a context and return an
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpResponse" title="django.http.HttpResponse"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt></a> object with the result of the rendered
template. Django provides a shortcut. Here&#8217;s the full <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index()</span></tt> view,
rewritten:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.shortcuts</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">render</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>


<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">index</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">latest_question_list</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Question</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">objects</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">order_by</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;-pub_date&#39;</span><span class="p">)[:</span><span class="mi">5</span><span class="p">]</span>
    <span class="n">context</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;latest_question_list&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">latest_question_list</span><span class="p">}</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">render</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;polls/index.html&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">context</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Note that once we&#8217;ve done this in all these views, we no longer need to import
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/api.html#module-django.template.loader" title="django.template.loader"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">loader</span></tt></a>, <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/api.html#django.template.RequestContext" title="django.template.RequestContext"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">RequestContext</span></tt></a> and
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpResponse" title="django.http.HttpResponse"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt></a> (you&#8217;ll want to keep <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt> if you
still have the stub methods for <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail</span></tt>, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">results</span></tt>, and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">vote</span></tt>).</p>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.render" title="django.shortcuts.render"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">render()</span></tt></a> function takes the request object as its
first argument, a template name as its second argument and a dictionary as its
optional third argument. It returns an <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/request-response.html#django.http.HttpResponse" title="django.http.HttpResponse"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">HttpResponse</span></tt></a>
object of the given template rendered with the given context.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-raising-a-404-error">
<span id="raising-a-404-error"></span><h2>Raising a 404 error<a class="headerlink" href="#raising-a-404-error" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Now, let&#8217;s tackle the question detail view &#8211; the page that displays the question text
for a given poll. Here&#8217;s the view:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.http</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Http404</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.shortcuts</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">render</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>
<span class="c"># ...</span>
<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">detail</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="k">try</span><span class="p">:</span>
        <span class="n">question</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">Question</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">objects</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">get</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">pk</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">)</span>
    <span class="k">except</span> <span class="n">Question</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">DoesNotExist</span><span class="p">:</span>
        <span class="k">raise</span> <span class="n">Http404</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&quot;Question does not exist&quot;</span><span class="p">)</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">render</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;polls/detail.html&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;question&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">question</span><span class="p">})</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The new concept here: The view raises the <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a> exception
if a question with the requested ID doesn&#8217;t exist.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll discuss what you could put in that <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/detail.html</span></tt> template a bit
later, but if you&#8217;d like to quickly get the above example working, a file
containing just:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/templates/polls/detail.html</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question</span> <span class="cp">}}</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>will get you started for now.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-a-shortcut-get-object-or-404">
<span id="a-shortcut-get-object-or-404"></span><h3>A shortcut: <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404" title="django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_object_or_404()</span></tt></a><a class="headerlink" href="#a-shortcut-get-object-or-404" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>It&#8217;s a very common idiom to use <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/querysets.html#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get" title="django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get"><tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">get()</span></tt></a>
and raise <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a> if the object doesn&#8217;t exist. Django
provides a shortcut. Here&#8217;s the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail()</span></tt> view, rewritten:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/views.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.shortcuts</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">get_object_or_404</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">render</span>

<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">polls.models</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">Question</span>
<span class="c"># ...</span>
<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">detail</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">):</span>
    <span class="n">question</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">get_object_or_404</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Question</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">pk</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="n">question_id</span><span class="p">)</span>
    <span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">render</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">request</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">&#39;polls/detail.html&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="p">{</span><span class="s">&#39;question&#39;</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="n">question</span><span class="p">})</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404" title="django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_object_or_404()</span></tt></a> function takes a Django model
as its first argument and an arbitrary number of keyword arguments, which it
passes to the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/querysets.html#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get" title="django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get"><tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">get()</span></tt></a> function of the
model&#8217;s manager. It raises <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a> if the object doesn&#8217;t
exist.</p>
<div class="admonition-philosophy admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Philosophy</p>
<p>Why do we use a helper function <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404" title="django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_object_or_404()</span></tt></a>
instead of automatically catching the
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/exceptions.html#django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist" title="django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">ObjectDoesNotExist</span></tt></a> exceptions at a higher
level, or having the model API raise <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a> instead of
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/exceptions.html#django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist" title="django.core.exceptions.ObjectDoesNotExist"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">ObjectDoesNotExist</span></tt></a>?</p>
<p class="last">Because that would couple the model layer to the view layer. One of the
foremost design goals of Django is to maintain loose coupling. Some
controlled coupling is introduced in the <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#module-django.shortcuts" title="django.shortcuts: Convenience shortcuts that span multiple levels of Django's MVC stack."><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">django.shortcuts</span></tt></a> module.</p>
</div>
<p>There&#8217;s also a <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.get_list_or_404" title="django.shortcuts.get_list_or_404"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_list_or_404()</span></tt></a> function, which works
just as <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/shortcuts.html#django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404" title="django.shortcuts.get_object_or_404"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_object_or_404()</span></tt></a> &#8211; except using
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/querysets.html#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.filter" title="django.db.models.query.QuerySet.filter"><tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">filter()</span></tt></a> instead of
<a class="reference internal" href="../ref/models/querysets.html#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get" title="django.db.models.query.QuerySet.get"><tt class="xref py py-meth docutils literal"><span class="pre">get()</span></tt></a>. It raises
<a class="reference internal" href="../topics/http/views.html#django.http.Http404" title="django.http.Http404"><tt class="xref py py-exc docutils literal"><span class="pre">Http404</span></tt></a> if the list is empty.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-use-the-template-system">
<span id="use-the-template-system"></span><h2>Use the template system<a class="headerlink" href="#use-the-template-system" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Back to the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail()</span></tt> view for our poll application. Given the context
variable <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question</span></tt>, here&#8217;s what the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/detail.html</span></tt> template might look
like:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/templates/polls/detail.html</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nt">&lt;h1&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/h1&gt;</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;ul&gt;</span>
<span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="nv">choice</span> <span class="k">in</span> <span class="nv">question.choice_set.all</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
    <span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">choice.choice_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/li&gt;</span>
<span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">endfor</span> <span class="cp">%}</span>
<span class="nt">&lt;/ul&gt;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The template system uses dot-lookup syntax to access variable attributes. In
the example of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{{</span> <span class="pre">question.question_text</span> <span class="pre">}}</span></tt>, first Django does a dictionary lookup
on the object <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question</span></tt>. Failing that, it tries an attribute lookup &#8211; which
works, in this case. If attribute lookup had failed, it would&#8217;ve tried a
list-index lookup.</p>
<p>Method-calling happens in the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/builtins.html#std:templatetag-for"><tt class="xref std std-ttag docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">for</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt></a> loop:
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question.choice_set.all</span></tt> is interpreted as the Python code
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">question.choice_set.all()</span></tt>, which returns an iterable of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Choice</span></tt> objects and is
suitable for use in the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/templates/builtins.html#std:templatetag-for"><tt class="xref std std-ttag docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">for</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt></a> tag.</p>
<p>See the <a class="reference internal" href="../topics/templates.html"><em>template guide</em></a> for more about templates.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-removing-hardcoded-urls-in-templates">
<span id="removing-hardcoded-urls-in-templates"></span><h2>Removing hardcoded URLs in templates<a class="headerlink" href="#removing-hardcoded-urls-in-templates" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Remember, when we wrote the link to a question in the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/index.html</span></tt>
template, the link was partially hardcoded like this:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;/polls/</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.id</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="s">/&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The problem with this hardcoded, tightly-coupled approach is that it becomes
challenging to change URLs on projects with a lot of templates. However, since
you defined the name argument in the <a class="reference internal" href="../ref/urls.html#django.conf.urls.url" title="django.conf.urls.url"><tt class="xref py py-func docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt></a> functions in
the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls.urls</span></tt> module, you can remove a reliance on specific URL paths
defined in your url configurations by using the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">url</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt> template tag:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">url</span> <span class="s1">&#39;detail&#39;</span> <span class="nv">question.id</span> <span class="cp">%}</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The way this works is by looking up the URL definition as specified in the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls.urls</span></tt> module. You can see exactly where the URL name of &#8216;detail&#8217; is
defined below:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="o">...</span>
<span class="c"># the &#39;name&#39; value as called by the {% url %} template tag</span>
<span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">detail</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;detail&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="o">...</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>If you want to change the URL of the polls detail view to something else,
perhaps to something like <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/specifics/12/</span></tt> instead of doing it in the
template (or templates) you would change it in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/urls.py</span></tt>:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="o">...</span>
<span class="c"># added the word &#39;specifics&#39;</span>
<span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^specifics/(?P&lt;question_id&gt;\d+)/$&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">views</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">detail</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">name</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&#39;detail&#39;</span><span class="p">),</span>
<span class="o">...</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-namespacing-url-names">
<span id="namespacing-url-names"></span><h2>Namespacing URL names<a class="headerlink" href="#namespacing-url-names" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The tutorial project has just one app, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt>. In real Django projects,
there might be five, ten, twenty apps or more. How does Django differentiate
the URL names between them? For example, the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls</span></tt> app has a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">detail</span></tt>
view, and so might an app on the same project that is for a blog. How does one
make it so that Django knows which app view to create for a url when using the
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">{%</span> <span class="pre">url</span> <span class="pre">%}</span></tt> template tag?</p>
<p>The answer is to add namespaces to your root URLconf. In the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">mysite/urls.py</span></tt>
file, go ahead and change it to include namespacing:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="snippet-filename">mysite/urls.py</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.conf.urls</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">url</span>
<span class="kn">from</span> <span class="nn">django.contrib</span> <span class="kn">import</span> <span class="n">admin</span>

<span class="n">urlpatterns</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">patterns</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^polls/&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">&#39;polls.urls&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">namespace</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s">&quot;polls&quot;</span><span class="p">)),</span>
    <span class="n">url</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">r&#39;^admin/&#39;</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">include</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">admin</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">site</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">urls</span><span class="p">)),</span>
<span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Now change your <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">polls/index.html</span></tt> template from:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/templates/polls/index.html</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">url</span> <span class="s1">&#39;detail&#39;</span> <span class="nv">question.id</span> <span class="cp">%}</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>to point at the namespaced detail view:</p>
<div class="highlight-html+django"><div class="snippet-filename">polls/templates/polls/index.html</div>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span class="nt">&lt;li&gt;&lt;a</span> <span class="na">href=</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="cp">{%</span> <span class="k">url</span> <span class="s1">&#39;polls:detail&#39;</span> <span class="nv">question.id</span> <span class="cp">%}</span><span class="s">&quot;</span><span class="nt">&gt;</span><span class="cp">{{</span> <span class="nv">question.question_text</span> <span class="cp">}}</span><span class="nt">&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>When you&#8217;re comfortable with writing views, read <a class="reference internal" href="tutorial04.html"><em>part 4 of this tutorial</em></a> to learn about simple form processing and generic views.</p>
</div>
</div>


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  <h3><a href="../contents.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
  <ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Writing your first Django app, part 3</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#philosophy">Philosophy</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#write-your-first-view">Write your first view</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#url-argument-regex"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt> argument: regex</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#url-argument-view"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt> argument: view</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#url-argument-kwargs"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt> argument: kwargs</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#url-argument-name"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">url()</span></tt> argument: name</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#writing-more-views">Writing more views</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#write-views-that-actually-do-something">Write views that actually do something</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#a-shortcut-render">A shortcut: <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">render()</span></tt></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#raising-a-404-error">Raising a 404 error</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#a-shortcut-get-object-or-404">A shortcut: <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">get_object_or_404()</span></tt></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#use-the-template-system">Use the template system</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#removing-hardcoded-urls-in-templates">Removing hardcoded URLs in templates</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#namespacing-url-names">Namespacing URL names</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

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